The avatar cannon of Angrybeth Shortbread
Selected glimpses of Burning Life 2005, SL's annual tribute to Burning Man. (Originally published beginning here.)
I think 2005 must mark the 8th year running when more than half a dozen friends say, "I'm going to Burning Man. Are you going to Burning Man?", and I say, "Yeah maybe, if...", and after a few half-hearted attempts at logistical planning, blow it off for the next year, in the run-up to which my fallback reply becomes, "But hasn't it gotten too big and mainstream to be any good anymore, anyway?", the retort always being, "No way, last year was the best ever!", forcing me to then say, "Yeah maybe, if...", and after a few half-hearted attempts at logistical planning...
Anyway. In the third run-up to Burning Life, Linden Lab's annual tribute to the legendary Black Rock event, I'm starting to detect some real cultural parity between the two events. Burning Man has become such a tradition, such a defining part of global bohemian life, that many people will spend the whole year planning for it. I know of folks whose San Francisco garages have been converted into veritable Burning Man labratories, where they'll tinker away at whatever wild project they're set to unveil in the Nevada desert, for the good part of the year. Pretty much planning much of their lives around the Labor Day weekend out there, and this chance to create for no other purpose than the joy of creating, and sharing it with others.
Which may also explain how some Residents can erect intricate and ornate Burning Life installations in a couple days after the site is opened. Like Vudu Suavage's delicately imposing Cthulu-like sculpture:
Or Foolish Frost's mechancial rose with petals that open and close, and at the center of the flower, a control panel that streams old music videos at the touch of a button:
I took these screenshots last Friday, only two days after the land was opened up for construction. (And by then, the Burning Life "man" was already dwarfed by most of the installations.) You'd almost think people were planning much of their second lives around the Labor Day weekend and this chance to create for no other purpose than the joy of creating, and sharing it with others.
More glimpses after the break.
NYLON PINKNEY'S JOURNEY TO WELLNESS
It begins with a neon lit-sign that points you through a cavernous mouth, inviting you to squeeze past the maw, past teeth the size of ottomans, down a bloody gullet, past the heart and other bloody innards, until you've finally wound up in the darkest part of the body, where a seat and a salad fork and a handy instructional illustration on the wall is waiting for you. Cheerfully suggesting that you commit an unthinkable act of self-mutilation.
As an immersive experience, it's about as effective as many site installations I've walked through at the SF MOMA or the Whitney, but as Nylon explains it, her inspiration was drawn from this world. "I saw a huge demon statue in here," Nylon says simply, "I think by Starax, where you could go inside the mouth. But there was nothing in there. I was thinking it'd be cool if you could actually go inside and see internal organs and stuff." Her first attempt at this was too gruesome, a bit more serial killer than symbolic, "so I made it more surreal which worked out even better. All the textures on my Burning Life statue were done by me, even the drawing at the bottom, which I just kinda threw in there as a last-second thing." (Unsurprising, as Ms. Pinkney was last seen in New World Notes helping teach in-world life drawing.)
To her, the Journey to Wellness restates the indelible paradox, "You can't know yourself until you look inside, and when you do, can you handle it?"
THE BLING MAN OF USHUAIA TOKUGAWA
"Bling-Man," Ushuaia Tokugawa tells me, "is a somewhat faithful implementation of a popular diversion from years gone by... In the long run, I plan on making it into a full event-style game with levels and ghosts and power-ups, the whole package." He hopes to see it have a permanent place in SL, after Burning Life is over. But, he suggests, its fundamental intent is less arcade than artful.
"[M]uch like Second Life itself," Tokugawa announces, "Bling-Man is not a game. The point of Bling-Man (also much like Second Life) is to collect as much bling as possible." In SL, as in hip hop, "bling" are the sparkling jewelry that hard-bodied, club-crawling Residents often wear. Residents who amass beaucoup bling tend to be casual users, or less charitably, noobs.
"One does not play Bling-Man," Tokugawa continues, "one experiences it. While you are experiencing Bling-Man please do not enjoy yourself. If you find yourself on the verge of enjoyment it may be time to reflect on a few of the hidden truths Bling-Man represents...
- Disparity of Technologies
Welcome to Second Life, a cutting edge advanced 3D simulation employing the latest enhancments in streaming technology which enable Residents from across the globe to come together to virtually participate in laggy two-dimensional board games.
- The Plight of the Blingtard
The unwashed masses of Second Life whose over-enhanced physiques, prim-laden hair, mesmerizing jewelry, and proclivity to play laggy two-dimensional board games provide the uber-class with both a topic for entertainment and a target for derision.
- Economy of Classes
Not only are the rich getting richer off the spending habits of the consumer class, they are the ones who actually develop and distribute the very skins, hair, jewelry, and laggy two-dimensional board games which transform each of these unassuming Ruths into the very mockery the uber-class despises."
In other words, it's interactive satire of the social divisions between the casual SL user and the serious content-creators (or if you insist-- and must you?-- the Feted Inner Core.)
"Of course," Ushuaia Tokugawa goes on, "this may all just be an elaborate smokescreen to disguise the fact that I've used Burning Life to create a gigantic Pac-Man. I'll probably turn this into laggy two-dimensional game to sell to venues so they can attract customers to their stores full of skins, hair and jewelry. Have fun!"
THE PRIM WIKI OF SEIFERT SURFACE
In the best of traditions, Seifert didn't really apply for his plot in Burning Life. Rather, he found an open, unclaimed spot, and comandeered it.
"As in, nobody was doing anything with it, so people went and did things anyway," he explains. "This being Burning Life, that seems appropriate." He set it up as a collective building project which anyone could-- by enabling modify rights to their contributions-- add or subtract to it. A 3D wiki, as it were.
"I just wanted to see what people would do," says Seifert. So someone comes along and builds a green-jade, Saturn-like planet, and someone else happens by and adds eyeballs to the planet. So now it's a planet with eyes. Mr. Surface builds two rockets, and by now, "it seemed reasonable to have the rockets pointing at the eyes. So now it looks a bit worried... Then someone else turned one of the rockets around, and added speech bubbles... people riffing off other people's ideas is I think the best thing to come out of this."
By the time I came by last Sunday to have a look, Seifert estimates 10 to 20 Residents have added their effort to the Prim Wiki. (He originally dubbed it the "Wiki Build", but others came to calling it the Prim Wiki. Not the name Seifert Surface had in mind, but "[i]t's a wiki though, so in that spirit, even the name is fluid.")
So far Surface is pleased with the results, though he'd like to see Linden Lab tweak the permission system so things like this could happen more often even after Burning Life. "I'd really like to see something implemented," he says, "say a way to assign a parcel of land to be 'wiki', which would mean that anyone has full permission to edit anything on that parcel. Who knows what kind of things we would see?"
Inspecting the progress thus far, Seifert Suface laughs. "I just noticed - someone added some fire ants crawling over the poptarts!" Behind him, I point out that someone has also built an impromptu 9/11 memorial next to a spinning portrait of Chairman Mao. I say this seems like an odd place for a 9/11 shrine, but Surface just shrugs.
OTHER INSTALLATIONS
Beach Bar Sandcastle by Kendra Bancroft
Regularity by Jackal Ennui: "A little ode to mathematics, to regularity and chaos-- may it entertain, bewilder or just amuse you..."
Stuff by Aimee Weber
Fertility by Ryntha Sauvage
Garden Maze by Vlinder Reitfeld
Geodesic Dome by Chandra Page. Notes played when the ridable sphere strikes the dome are from the C Major scale.
Two Track Mind by Siggy Romulus
The Magic Pirate Cave Adventure of Keith Extraordinaire and team (mini-adventure game in Burning Life)
God Switch by Burke Prefect
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